Portrait in Time
by Romantic Twist
Summary: Actress Elise McKenna and artist Eben Adams meet in 1950 to share surprisingly similar stories of having lost loved ones through the consequences of time travel. (Sequel to "Portrait of Jennie" and "Somewhere in Time").
1. A Loss within Control

Story notes: This is a combined sequel to the movies "Somewhere in Time" (1980, based on the novel "Bid Time Return" and "Portrait of Jennie" (1948, based on Robert Nathan's novel).

_1950…._

Elise McKenna was approaching, if not into, the twilight years of a very successful acting career. She had performed the leading lady roles created by many a playwright, appearing on stage in almost every continent in the world. Soon, she considered, an invention called television might well preserve plays on film in the same manner that cinematic movies had done for the last few decades. Unlike the silent films that had been made in her youth, the current films had dialog and sound effects as well.

Yet she would be entering that medium too late, if she continued to age, which of course she would. She wanted some way of preserving the youthful image, which she had briefly shared with a man who had been torn from her in the most unbelievable way.

It was while musing on such thoughts, that she visited a museum, and saw the most breathtaking picture of a woman that anyone could see, let alone another woman. It was framed below a sign that offered its title 'Portrait of Jennie' and signed by the artist Eben Adams. There was something incredibly timeless about the image portrayed in that picture.

Timeless. That word meant a great deal to Elise McKenna. She would not leave the museum without following up the new sensations, which that picture had begun to stir in her mind. She asked a staff member if she could speak to the curator, and was soon introduced.

"It's an honour to have you here, Miss McKenna," said the curator, "I dare say there are few people in the world who have not seen one of your plays."

"You are kind," said Elise, "Actually, I was wondering how many people have seen the painting titled 'Portrait of Jennie' in your main exhibition room."

"We have pictures that come and go, but that one will remain here forever," said the curator.

"What about the artist, Eben Adams? Does he come here with more of his work? I couldn't see any other paintings by him in the museum."

"He went into seclusion. There were even rumours of his having lost the will to live, but I don't believe an artist who could capture the visual essence of the living so completely could ever give up on life itself. There is one elderly person who might know how to reach him. Her name is Miss Spinney. I'm sure she'd like to meet the famous Elise McKenna."

The curator set up a meeting, and Elise visited Miss Spinney at the studio of her associate art dealer Mr Matthews.

"I hope I haven't imposed on you, Miss Spinney," said Elise, a little uneasily.

"If I thought you were an imposition, I wouldn't have invited you here at the curator's request," said Spinney, as assertive with the younger celebrity as she had once been with the much younger unknown struggling painter Eben Adams who would be the subject of this present conversation, "Besides, I welcome any chance to talk with someone about Eben Adams. He knows a unique and special kind of loss of something that most people might never believe he actually had in the first place."

"That's the kind of loss I suffered many years ago," said Elise, "Maybe that's why the picture affected me so deeply. I'd been thinking about posing for a portrait, something that would mean more than an endless supply of publicity photographs. I went to the museum, still thinking about it, and I think Eben Adams would be the man to do it."

"I once told him that there wasn't a drop of love in any of his pictures of flowers and landscapes," said Spinney, "But then he found someone who brought all of the love in him to life, and he captured her forever in that portrait."

"What happened to her?"

"She was lost in a storm at sea, when it struck the rocks at Lands End Light. Eben was there, when it happened, trying to hold onto her, as the wave ripped her hand from his. He's sold a few minor works of art since then, but never has he painted another picture like the Portrait of Jennie. Before it happened he said that painting her was the one thing he was certain he would do. So you see, Miss McKenna, for a portrait of you to be as engaging as that picture, he would have to find you as engaging as Jennie."

"Would he be prepared to meet me?" asked Elise.

"He might. I could ask. You might be just the person to lift his spirits. I do hate to see depression and loneliness destroying such a kind man by eating away at him slowly. I'll pass on the curator's favour to us, by doing the same one for you and Eben Adams," said Spinney.

Elise had been considering a contract to appear in a tour of a new play, in which she had been offered a leading role. She now decided to put that on hold, and sent a telegraph to the producer, saying that she would be prepared to appear in it later, or willing to relinquish the role to an understudy. Free of other concerns, she soon had the opportunity to call on Eben Adams.

"You must forgive me, Miss McKenna. Your work is well known, but I haven't felt like going out to a theatre … alone."

"Miss Spinney told me a little about … about Jennie," said Elise, "I too have a story to tell, but I would also like to commission you, if you're interested in taking on new work, to paint a portrait of me. I realise it might not be driven along by the same motivation as your greatest portrait, but there's no artist I'd rather sit for."

"It would be an honour to paint you, Miss McKenna. In fact, there's something about you that has a similar timelessness. What was it Matthews once said? Oh yes. 'There ought to be something timeless about a woman. You could see it in all the famous portraits. You felt as though you could meet those women anywhere, in any time' or something like that. It seems like so much longer than it actually has been, since I first met Spinney and Matthews."

So for several weeks, Elise McKenna took a room in a New York hotel, and avoided all public appearances, committing her time to sitting for her portrait. Eben seemed keen to concentrate, and she was not sure how much her bizarre story would have distracted him. Patiently, she waited until the picture was done, and then invited him out to dinner to celebrate.

They sat in a restaurant overlooking Central Park. Adams had chosen the location himself, saying that it was his one condition for dining with her.

"Your picture of me somehow captures something that's never come out in any of my publicity photographs," she said, "So why did you want this location for our dinner?"

"Because that's where it all started," said Eben, pointing out the window into the park, "That's where I first met Jennie. Most people wouldn't believe my story. My friend Gus either eventually believed it or continued to humour me. It's been harder to see him, since she died, as his presence was locked into the memories of her. It's funny. They never even met each other, but I was always talking about Jennie with him, while I was waiting to see her again."

"She must have been very special, like my Richard. If you like, I'll tell you about him too, but I don't want to interrupt your story," said Elise.

"Let's both tell our stories tonight," said Eben, "Although yours will be much more straightforward."

"I doubt that," thought Elise.

Chapter End Notes: "Excess within control, McKenna" (spoken by Elise's agent in the movie "Somewhere in Time").


	2. Where I come from, Time ever flows

Eben became fully absorbed in telling his story.

"I was walking through that park once, towards the end of a day, without a dollar to my name, and not in the least concerned. I saw a scarf on the park bench, and then a sweet teenage girl called out that it belonged to her. We sat down and started talking. She had a delicate feminine quality that's rare in any time, especially the 1930s. I think I subconsciously wished even that day, that she was an adult. Her conversation moved me, with the simplest of subject matter, just because of the gentle way she spoke, and the positive outlook she had on every aspect of life. She believed in the one true God in a time when so many people have been conditioned by the secular entertainment industry to dismiss Him as myth. The funny thing was that she said her parents were (as in present tense at the time of my meeting her) high wire trapeze artists at Hammersteins. Yet I knew Hammersteins had been torn down years before. Hours later, when I was talking to Gus, he noticed that the newspaper which had wrapped her scarf was dated 1910. Yet it was the 1930s. The paper looked as if it had been printed that day. No aging, no tears in it, no stains."

"Do you mean that this girl was somehow out of time?"

"It took me a long time to get a grasp on that concept, and I doubt that Spinney's ever really believed me about that, but she must have been."

"You won't find my story nearly so disappointing as you thought," said Elise.

"I wouldn't have been disappointed. I just doubted that you'd believe mine," said Eben, "Days later I saw Jennie again in the park. But she was a few years older, and talking of different people in her life: a different teenage friend than the Cecily Brown she'd first mentioned, and other differences too. In between our second and third meetings, I checked out Hammersteins, to confirm it had indeed been replaced by the Rialto, met a few old staff and learned how Jennie's parents had died. Then I saw her again crying in the park, grieving as though it had just happened …. because to her, it had. She was being drawn into the 1930s from various points in her youth. I think in real time, had she lived, she'd have been older than me. If she was in her early teens in 1910, and I wasn't born until then … but it wouldn't have mattered to me. Anyway, I kept seeing her now and then, whenever she'd mysteriously appear. The long waits were the best and worst times of my life. At least for once, I had someone to wait for. She'd asked me to wait, for her to grow up… said she was hurrying. Then she was grown up, and I did the portrait. The whole world was oblivious to the time we spent together on those nights, and then the hustle and bustle outside would start up in her absence, and I just wanted to hide away from it until she returned. She said she'd be going away for summer to visit a sick relative, and that after that we'd be together forever. While she was a way, I visited the convent where she'd once taken me. I realise now, that she'd somehow taken me back to the past, to her real time, on that one day, when her friends were taking the veil. Every other meeting we had must have involved her coming to my time. She never seemed to notice how modern things must have looked, when she was with me, possibly because it was almost always at night. I never thought about that before. While I was at the convent, an elderly sister who'd once known Jennie told me that she had died out at Lands End Light on October 5th, but 20 years earlier. I knew that the time differential between Jennie and me had been somehow overlooked in all of our meetings. Would it be overlooked now, when she so desperately needed to be saved? I headed out, bought a boat and reached the lighthouse ahead of her, saw her sailing in on a small boat … and lost her. It was like she didn't even understand the danger of dying at sea. She promised we'd be together, but all I've done is mourn her ever since, and until you came along, I couldn't paint another meaningful portrait. I don't know why you brought my artistic sense to life again, but you did."

"I know why," said Elise, "It's because I lost my Richard through an error of time too."

"Error of time! That's what Jennie said, when the wave was coming towards the rocks. She said that time had made an error, that we were lonely and unloved until we met each other. She was probably harking back to an earlier more peaceful talk, when I'd asked her if we could have met and loved others in other times, and she'd said that we were only made for each other."

"Like Richard and me. He turned up at my seaside hotel, not long after the real time from which your teenaged Jennie first came," said Elise, "He was insistent on spending time with me, incredibly handsome, humorous in a slightly self-deprecating way, and not always as self assured as he should have been. Despite the constant controlling interference of my agent, Richard Collier persuaded me to spend time with him. We fell in love, and my agent arranged for Richard to be assaulted and left for dead on the lawn. I dismissed my agent and found Richard, and had lunch with him on the floor of a hotel room … his or mine, I don't remember. He told me the most amazing story of how he'd been visited by my elderly self in 1972, at a party soon after he graduated from college. Apparently, all I had said to him was 'Come back to me.'."

"1972. That's 22 years away, even now," said Eben.

"He saw old photographs of me, from your Jennie's time, I'm guessing," in 1980, when he was suffering a similar artistic block to the ones you've alluded to in our earlier talks," said Elise, "Richard consulted his old university professor, who had once talked about a possible technique for time travel by hypnosis. The professor had told him to remove every aspect of 1980 from his presence before attempting time travel. So he obtained old currency, an old suit and had his hair styled in the manner of men of my time period. He went to the same seaside hotel at which I had stayed in my youth, looked at the guest book archives and found his own signature from the same time that I was there. The time paradox had confirmed to him that he would succeed in time travelling back to meet me. Back then the very concepts he was talking about had me convinced that he might be a little deluded, possibly mentally ill, but that took nothing away from his charm or his appeal to me. Then, his story was proved beyond all doubt, just as I lost him. We were laughing and joking and then he felt something in the inner pocket of his coat, and took out a coin. He looked at the date in horror. It was dated 1979. He must have instantly remembered the professor's warning about removing all present objects before attempting time travel. As he was pulled through some white void before my very eyes, and then the hotel room returned to normal (but without Richard Collier), he must have found that the coin was some sort of lodestone which drew him back to 1980. Whether he tried to come back again, I don't know. I never saw him again."

"That's what was in your eyes!" said Eben, "When you first came to me, I mean. You faced a similar loss, caused by a similar trick of time travel, and it came across in your eyes. You don't know how good it's been to share my story with someone who understands, who has every reason to believe it."

"And you believe mine," said Elise, "I never married, possibly never will."

"If only this hypnotism trick could take me back to before Jennie died, so I could try again," said Eben.

"You'd already be there, from the last time you went back. That doesn't seem right, or that it would work, even with the way the laws of time have been bent in our special cases," said Elise, "But maybe we could alter _each other's_ outcomes."

Chapter End notes: _"Where I come, from nobody knows._

_ Where I am going, everyone goes." _

(sung by Jennie Appleton in "Portrait of Jennie".)


	3. Strangers on a Timeline

"How? Your younger self didn't know about Jenny."

"I know. And Richard's younger self won't know about the coin in the suit pocket. I'm destined to tell him to 'Come back to me' in 22 years' time, but for my new plan to work, we may never have that meeting. You'll still be fit and active in 1972, and even in 1980. You could do it, Eben. You could remember to go to that hotel in 1980 and tell Richard about the coin. Tell him I sent you by meeting you back in 1950 and sharing my story. Tell him to do the time travel by hypnosis, but to make sure there's nothing from 1980 in any of the suit's pockets. Then when he goes back all those years to my early career days and meets me at the seaside hotel, he'll stay there. We'll live our lives out in my time."

"And I could also tell him my story! I get it!" said Eben, "I'll ask him to find Jennie in the days when you and she were younger, to tell Jennie my story, to warn her not to sail out to Lands End Light in the first place. He'll have to persuade her of just how much we'll both lose if she doesn't conquer the curious urge she had to brave an approaching sea storm that existed in her current timeline. I couldn't even persuade her to flee to the lighthouse when the danger was almost upon us. It was as if she knew what would happen and went into the danger anyway. It could work!"

"For now, we both live another 30 years of loneliness, but then when Richard goes back, it all changes."

"I wonder if Jennie and I will live out our married life together in my time or hers, once the timeline gets altered," said Eben.

"Does it matter?"

"Not at all, just so long as time doesn't keep separating us for months on end."

"I don't think it will after this," said Elise, "You remember telling me how she believed in God? Romans 8:28 says that God works out everything for the good of those who love Him. In other words, He allows every bad thing to happen for a reason. If you hadn't faced your loss in the first timeline, you'd never have been able to help me now, and the vice versa is probably true too."

"Does God approve of time travel? I'd never thought about that," said Eben.

"I asked a Seventh Day Adventist pastor once, hypothetically. I'd heard him preach about the evil of occult focussed stories, and asked if time travel novels were alright to read. He said there was nothing wrong with it. I doubt he'd have believed that I'd loved a man who'd done it though."

"So I sit on our secrets for 30 years and then go into action with Richard Collier," said Eben.

"You don't have to sit on them alone," said Elise, "I'll still be alive until some time in the 1970s. I won't be around in 1980, according to what Richard knew of the timeline, but definitely at least until 1972. A burden shared is a burden halved."

"It sure is, especially since our plan will eventually rewrite that burden out of existence."

"Can you handle being just fellow time tricked friends all those years?" asked Elise, "Your friendship would be dear to me, but I wouldn't even think of us replacing Richard and Jennie with each other."

"Nor would I," said Eben, "Jennie said it herself. There would be nobody else for either of us, not in any time. The same was true for you and Richard, or you'd have married another long before 1972."

So keeping their secrets, telling nobody among their growing number of social contacts why neither of them ever married others nor each other, they walked through Central Park whenever Elise could be in New York. They visited the seaside hotel, whenever Eben could venture down there. He painted pictures of the hotel, and the lawn overlooking the ocean, which rivalled any of the early landscapes that Matthews and Spinney had once rejected.

In the 1970s, Eben attended the funeral of Elise McKenna, knowing that she had told him her last wishes as early as 1950. Now he had to wait a few more years, before he could carry them out, for both her benefit and his own.

Early in 1980, he found it easy to obtain the telephone number of an as yet unknown junior playwright. Richard Collier was still listed with directory assistance. Eben telephoned him and said, "I have an amazing story to tell you, one that concerns a lady from the past whose life will soon be inextricably linked with your own … a lady called Elise McKenna."

Richard Collier agreed to meet the elderly Eben Adams at the museum, where his Portrait of Jennie still hung. Eben Adams told Richard of his series of encounters with Jennie, of her death, of his subsequent meeting with Elise McKenna, of the secret pact that they had made to alter the outcomes of the tricks that time had played on both of them. He outlined their plan, and Richard thanked him for all of his help.

"I can never repay you in any way other than by doing what you ask," said Richard, "If you're right, I'll never be back in the 1980s or any subsequent decade again. I might live a few years concurrent with my younger self, when I'm getting old, and have to avoid meeting him, but I doubt I'll make it past 1979. You have my word. Once united with Elise, I'll tell her everything you've told me from the previous timeline. We will not rest until we've found your younger Jennie and made absolutely sure that she doesn't take that trip to Lands End Light."

"I can ask no more," said Eben, "As things are, I'm not long for this world. Matthews and Spinney have both passed on. Elise as I knew her has passed on. You're the only one left in the world who understands the importance of what has to be done, if we're all to be united with our loved ones across the reaches of time."

"I wish you could be with me, to see me off, when I do the time travelling, but you'd probably be a part of 1980 that would prevent me from succeeding. Are you sure you don't want me to introduce your child self to the young adult Jennie instead?"

"The age difference wouldn't make me love her any less, but it would interfere with all of the time events that enabled her to interact with my 1930s self," said Eben, "For things to go as they did, with the one exception of her living, Eben Adams, depression era struggling artist would have to meet Jennie Appleton for the first time in Central Park in the Winter of 1934."

"Then he will, and this time he won't lose her," said Richard, "I'll speak to the professor and learn the technique, and then head down to the seaside hotel."

"And I'll stay right out of your way," said Eben.

Chapter End Notes: In the movie "Strangers on a Train", a man asks tennis star Guy Haines to murder the man's mother, and offers to murder Haines' divorcing wife. Rather than assisting each other with murders, the characters in this story assist each other with time travel romances.


	4. Some Day in New York

Richard bade the old man farewell and made his plans. He recorded a speech to hypnotize himself into a journey many decades into the past, and hid the tape recorder under his bed in the hotel room in 1980. Now he could hear his hypnotic voice, saying "…. Your mind accepts this." Yet he could not see the 1980 recording device. He travelled back to the past, met Elise and saw the events unfold as they had done in the first timeline. This time there was no 1979 coin, nothing to draw him back to 1980. He told Eben's incredible story to Elise, and she agreed to help him find Jennie Appleton.

The next time Elise was performing in New York, they tried Hammersteins, but Jennie had already lost her parents and moved on from there. It was at the convent that they caught up to her. She had already met Eben Adams several times, by traversing time in ways she did not understand.

"We too are from different times," said Elise, "I still don't understand all this myself completely, but Richard came to me from the year 1980…"

Richard and Elise explained the full details of the story which had been passed from the previous timeline's 1950 Elise McKenna to its Eben Adams, to the January 1980 Richard Collier. The dire warning not to sail to Lands End Light, and the state that Eben had fallen into after losing Jennie, were explained in graphic detail. Ironically, Richard Collier would now never know that, in the previous timeline, he had lost the will to live after losing Elise, when he had been returned to 1980. He had been found in his hotel room sitting in death. That would now never happen. Both Jennie's and Richard's deaths were averted. Jennie promised that she would never take that sailing journey, and Richard and Elise were married. She starred in a number of his plays as the years went on.

_1935…._

Eben Adams went to the convent to learn more about Jennie. She was away for a three month period, visiting a sick relative, and Eben was talking to an elderly sister about the Jennie, whom to her, was a distant memory. She had lost touch with Jennie, but did not mention the girl's death, because it didn't happen. Eben thanked her for her time, and walked out onto the verandah, and there was Jennie standing in an elegant feminine dress, smiling at him.

"From now on we'll always be together, Eben," she said, "You'll never have to wait for me again."

She did not wish to confuse Eben by telling him what she'd learned of the previous timeline from Richard Collier. She had avoided Lands End Light, and lived on. She did consider one thing. Richard Collier had stayed in Elise's time, in his past, her present, where her career was the focal event that had locked her place in time, and enabled the 1980 Richard Collier to learn of her existence in the first place. Jennie guessed that the late 1930s was the time that she must live in, where Eben's portrait would launch a painting career, where his picture of her would begin its long stay in the museum. She knew that she would not be pulled back into her own time again. As an adult, she had not lived that much earlier than Eben, only 20 years. The time differential between Richard Collier and Elise McKenna had been much greater. In Jennie's time, her parents were deceased, her time at the convent concluded, and her career at Hammersteins no longer possible nor desirable.

In 1937, she married Eben Adams. They were skating nostalgically in Central Park one day, when Eben suggested that they have lunch in a restaurant, which overlooked the park. He did not know that it was the restaurant that he and Elise had used to share their stories in the 1950 of the previous timeline.

"That sounds like a lovely idea, Eben," said Jennie, "I wonder what made you think of it."

They walked across the street, and were soon within earshot of a teenaged boy.

"Paper, Mister?" called the boy.

"Sure, why not?" said Eben, and bought one.

They went up to the restaurant and sat down. Jennie gaped at the front page of the newspaper.

ELISE MCKENNA TO

STAR IN ANOTHER OF

HER HUSBAND'S PLAYS

IN NEW YORK THIS MONTH.

"Can we go and see it?" she asked, "I knew them. I met them while I was still growing into the woman you eventually married."

"In the enterainment industry?" asked Eben, recalling her teenage years at Hammerstein's.

"No. I think I should tell you something I've kept from you. It was a mistake not to tell you, if it turns out that we'll be friends with the Colliers for the rest of our lives."

Jennie Adams told Eben of the warnings she'd had from Richard and Elise, the warnings that prevented her otherwise fateful sailing journey to Lands End Light.

"No wonder you were frightened of my lighthouse picture that night in my apartment," said Eben, "You didn't know why back then."


	5. Twilight of Contentment

Eben was amazed to learn that he had aged into 1980 in a previous timeline, having lost Jennie to a death at sea, and had prompted this Richard Collier to travel back and change things.

"In their case, the writer, the man, is the one living out of time," said Jennie, "I guess I'm a bit like Elise, except I'm the time traveller. I was at Hammerstein's. Elise is on the stages of theatres."

"So Richard Collier's from 1980," said Eben, "He's gone back in time as surely as I somehow did the day you took me to see the sisters take the veil."

"I was too young to understand that we were traversing time that day. I thought you were in my time, and you thought I was in yours, during all of our early meetings. Now it doesn't matter, but we have to see them."

On the night of the first performance of the play, Richard Collier was seated in a box seat, looking at his wife's performance. Before he could get up to leave, he was approached by Jennie.

"Jennie Appleton!" he said, "After all these years."

"Fewer years for you than for me," she said, "Like you I time travelled and married my beloved in his time, not mine. Only I went forward, not backward in time. I'm not much older than I was when you warned me to avoid Lands End Light."

"And this is Eben?"

"Yes."

Richard shook his hand.

"You have to join us for coffee after Elise has taken her final bow."

For the first time, all four of them were able to sit in Eben's favourite restaurant. The lamps in Central Park did not reveal much, but these four had all the important images in their memories anyway.

"So you don't know it, Eben, but you made sure Richard came to me to stay," said Elise.

"But how can I still have done that, if I live a different life now that I have Jennie with me to stay?" asked Eben.

"My professor himself couldn't have answered that one," said Richard, "He never did tackle the subject of time paradoxes. I guess time just made everything right for all four of us."

"We're sitting on the biggest secrets of … pardon the unintended pun … all time," said Eben, "Only Elise and I are in our native time period."

"While Richard and I are out of ours," said Jennie, "But nobody else needs to know. I don't know what Cecily Brown would think, if she saw me now and wondered why I didn't look as old as I should in the late 1930s."

"There are rumours of another great war approaching," said Eben.

"I know all about it," said Richard, "I studied World War II in high school. It runs from 1939 to 1945."

"WORLD War TWO!" said Elise.

"It won't affect us. We won't get involved. We're used to keeping our time displaced spouses out of the way," said Eben, "And we will again. Elise and I were meant to live beyond 1945 in the previous timeline, because we did. We made it to the 1970s. So we will in this timeline too."

"And there won't be any birth certificate for Richard Collier in the 1930s, since I'm not born until several years' time," said Richard, "And Jennie's records will be confused by her sudden disappearance from her native time."

"I looked into that anonymously. The sisters assumed me missing, but not dead. Officially, I probably did die as Jennie Appleton some time in the years approaching 1920. So Jennie Adams has no records in 1937 either."

"So even if conscription could be applied to us, which it can't," said Richard, "We don't officially exist in this time period. I will write something to help the morale of the war effort though."

As the years rolled on, all four of them avoided any encounter with the younger Richard Collier of his native time, once he was born, and they avoided any encounter with the professor as well, so as to prevent any further time paradoxes from eventuating, especially those which might undo all that had happened to bring them together. The four of them remained close friends and continued to double date, until old age claimed both Richard and Elise in the 1970s.

Eben and Jennie Adams continued to enjoy their twilight years, until Eben died in January 1983. Jennie lived on, a widow out of time, but contented with many happy memories, until she died peacefully, after falling asleep while watching a movie in bed, on a Saturday evening in April 1989.

Not only were the strands of Jennie's and Eben's lives interwoven together. Not only were the strands of Richard's and Elise's lives interwoven together. The best outcomes for all of them were facilitated by the fact that the strands of both couples' lives had been interwoven together, uniting all four of them across several decades.

And due to a rare positive outcome of a phenomenon known in recent years as the Butterfly Effect, one other thing had happened. In 1938, Matthews and Spinney had married.

In the end, time had been kind to all of them.


End file.
